


Black

by meli_fan



Series: Schuffled Love Story [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, So much angst, like I puked angst, not my fault it's the song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 16:57:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meli_fan/pseuds/meli_fan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the love gone bad<br/>Turned my world to black<br/>Tattooed all I see<br/>All that I am<br/>All I'll be</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black

**Author's Note:**

> The idea came from PuzzledHats who stole it off the Brienne/Jaimie fandom.
> 
> The rules are pretty simple: put your ipod on shuffle and write a fic based on the first song that comes up.
> 
> Song: Black by Pearl Jam aka Angstiest Song Ever.

**Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay**

**Were laid spread out before me as her body once did.**

 

He wakes up everyday, goes to the garage to work, goes back home and falls asleep on his couch after hours of mindless television and a meal he cannot taste. On his free days, he goes out to the park or the mall or anywhere. His place is a painful reminder of their time together. When he had moved here at nineteen, she had skipped school to help him move in- not that he had much stuff beside clothes and a mattress - and the furniture arrangement she had done had stuck. The paint on his walls they had done in a weekend during her junior year.

 

_“You’re doing it all wrong, look how you’re slash paint all over!” She admonished him as she showed her perfect technique to him._

 

_“It’s a good thing we got no clothes on then, right?” He joked ignoring her obnoxious correction of everything he did. They had just begun dating, and he took every opportunity he had to see her naked._

 

_Arya let out an indignant laugh before throwing her paint roller and taking a leap toward him. He catched her easily, skinny little thing that she was. They were both splashed with_

_paint._

 

Arya and him had been friends since children. He had met her not too long after he had been thrown into foster care after his mother’s death and they had been inseparable since then. Ned Stark never had a problem with the two of them and before he died he had thanked Gendry for taking good care of his daughter. Her brothers and sister did not trust their relationship at first, but once Jon Snow accepted it, the rest of them followed easily. Her mother, obviously, never came to terms with their closeness.

 

And they had been so close, sometimes Gendry though he missed her friendship more than he missed her. When he woke up in the middle of the night, his insecurities and hardships keeping his mind unease, he longed for the one girl who made time to listen to him, the girl who saw in him someone worth wasting her time.

 

_“It’s unfair” she said. “I’m not smarter than you, you should be the one going to college.”_

 

_“You’re the one with the good grades.” And the money, he wanted to say, but he kept it to himself. Arya let out a short laugh._

 

_“As if that means anything. Getting good school grades is just memorizing. Besides I didn’t say I wasn’t smart, because I am,” she shot him an arrogant look, “I’m just saying, you’re the one who is brilliant.”_

 

_His heart missed a beat at her words and he was overcome with an urge to hold her and never ever let her go. The last person who thought him smart was his mother, and she had gone so easily. Instead he just shrugged and asked “How do you know I’m smart, sorry brilliant.”_

 

_“You understand engines, you gotta be smart for that. And you figured out how to make me happy after dad passed away, and that makes you brilliant.” The sincerity in her voice made him fall in love with her all over again._

 

They had been one of those cute love stories girls love. They went from friends to lovers. It had been disturbing for him at the beginning when he had been fifteen and he was having sex dreams with his thirteen year old friend, but once she grew up, it was inevitable. Their bodies always seemed to yearn the other and even if they had never been very affectionate, it seemed as touching each other calmed some sort of urgency that grew inside of them.

 

He still remembers how stupid they were back then. How they used any possible excuse to hug, to hold hands, to lock eyes, to sit close and brush legs. Even if Arya was not particularly pretty in her first teenage years, she catched his attention all the same. Perhaps it was because unlike everyone else, she noticed him. She had no other friends, she looked up to him, smiled in mischief with him, shared stories with him. Just as she was the only one for him, he was the only one for her and maybe that’s what made her attractive even if she was not exactly pretty.

 

Not much later, once she became his in body and soul, he would come to find her beautiful, the one bright thing in his life.

 

**All five horizons revolved around her soul as the earth to the sun**

**Now the air I tasted and breathed has taken a turn**

 

The day her mother took her away is still imprinted in his mind. Her tears, her hair all messy, her hastily put on clothes. And her eyes of course. It seems so unfair that he - who made her laugh so many times - is cursed with such a painful last memory of her.

 

In some ways he understood her mother. He was a nobody, he had nothing to offer. Nothing to his name, nothing entirely his. Except her.

 

Arya had been his partner, his best friend, his companion, his world. His everything, really.

 

_“I want to go to Braavos someday, would you come with me?” She was looking up at him from the bed, all long naked limbs and disheveled hair._

 

_“Sure.” He faked hesitation for a moment, although he doubted she bought it. They had been together long enough for her to see he always followed her in anything she wanted to do._

 

_“We can go live there. You and me. You can start our own bussiness. You will fix the cars and I will manage it, I’m good at that.” She says with a smile._

 

_“Sounds like a good plan.” he says. He imagines her all tanned because of the Braavosi sun, all pretty and happy and only his, with no more problems rather than how many children they plan on having._

 

_“Of course. If it comes from my head, it’s a good plan.”_

 

_“You and me together in Braavos.”_

 

_“You and me happy together in Braavos.”_

 

“You have to go out with someone. I’ll introduce you to some girls, or maybe Anguy will or Tom, I don’t know. C’mon man. I- “ Hot Pie tries to be a good friend, but fails miserably.

 

“I don’t want to see other girls! I want to be alone, so let me be alone.” Gendry is tired of being angry, tired of directing his fury towards the friends he has. The friends he had made with Arya in the first place. The friends that brought painful memories as well.

 

“I’m just trying to look out for you.”

They all did. They all tried to take care of him. Tobho, Hot Pie, Tom, Anguy, Lem, Yoren. They couldn’t see. They couldn’t see that the only person who had ever actually been able to take care of him was Arya.

 

They couldn’t understand. She had been his everything. He worked and worked so he could offer her things. Luxuries he knew she was used to no matter how much she denied needing them. He saved money because he wanted to take her to Braavos one day. He had it all planned out. He had imagined a life with her.

 

Because she made him happy. His life was happy with her. He went to work and when he came back home she was in his apartment, once again spending the night much to the fury of her mother, singing some crappy indie song as she admonished him for having such a mess but kissing him for remembering to buy that expensive almond milk she liked. And they would both cook together something bad but not quite as awful as what  they used to cook at first. And then as she washed the dishes she would complain about school as he sat in the couch and closed his eyes for a moment, because he knew it would be a restless night.

 

_“... So once again I am proved that I go to school with a bunch of stupid idiots.” She is walking towards him. He can hear her footsteps as she walks towards him._

 

_She straddled him and his hand immediately go to her legs, keeping her in place. As her head comes near his, the tips of her hair tickle him and he lets out a chuckle. He feels her finger run through his hair as she grabs them and pulls him towards her._

 

_“Are you even listening to me?” she whispers._

 

_He wants to say yes, but he is too distracted by the ways she has started to move her pelvis forwards, his hips stubbornly refusing to contain his need to meet her thrust . When they touch each other, through layers of clothes, a heat spreads across his body. He kisses her then, hungrily and desperately, and responds the kiss with as much force._

 

_He doesn’t need to answer then, she knows she has captured his full attention._

 

He had imagined he would spent countless restless nights with her. Spending the rest of their lives so deep in each other they would not know where one began and the other ended.

 

Now all he has are photographs and memories around the city and an apartment that is what it is because she made it her home.

 

**Ooh, and all I taught her was everything**

**Ooh, I know she gave me all that she wore**

 

Loving each other had been an education. He had to learn every detail about her. And then it became an enlightenment, when he learned he loved every detail about her.

 

He wondered, now that she was away from him, learning like him to live her own life again, if she had loved him as deeply as he did. Had she loved their stupid fights as much as he did? Had she found their wrestling as endearing as he had? Did she miss every stupid little detail like he did? It she had truly loved him, then she probably did.

 

He had never kept anything from her. There had never been an activity that he did only with his friends, he had never asked for a day of the week to be on his own. He had shared every little thing with her: every doubt, every fault, every dream, every desire, every piece of himself.

 

Had she done the same?

 

_“I just…” eleven year old Arya looked at him from the other arcade, her game finished. She had been ranting about Sansa and Jeyne’s stupid conversations to him for better part of the last hour and he had finally asked her why it bothered her so much._

 

_“What?” he asked. He was trying to concentrate in the game, but he hardly ever saw Arya look so insecure, so little._

 

_“I know I am not as girly and as pretty as them and maybe I don’t care about that stuff they talk about but,” his game finished and when he turned to her she dropped her head in shame, not wanting him to see the vulnerability in her eyes. “I just wish sometimes they tried to include me.”_

 

_He did not know what to say. He was thirteen and he did not understand why his friend wanted those silly girls to engulf her in her boring conversations of make-up and hair. They would probably ruin her awesomeness. So he only answered the first thing that came to his mind._

 

_“They’re not prettier than you.” He said. It was true to him. In his mind there was two ranks of girl’s beauty: senior Arianne Martell and the rest of the girls. “You’re just as pretty as them.”_

 

_“You think so?” she asked him with a smile. He nodded. “Cool.”_

 

_“C’mon, I bet I can beat you in Mortal Kombat.”_

 

_“Keep dreaming buddy!”_

 

The answer was yes. Arya had shared her fears with him. Her resentment to her mother for trying to force her to be something she wasn’t, her sadness after every fight with Sansa ended in her sister calling her ugly, her disappointment that her father did not stop Jon from leaving the house.

 

She had shed every tear she had when her father died, and she had done it in his arms.

 

She had her first drink, her first cigarette, her first joint, with him. She had broken her arms twice while they played together. She made improper jokes, farted and puked drunk in front of him.

 

She had given her body to him to do as he pleased, and he had never failed to fulfill her in love and pleasure.

 

Yes she had done the same. She had given him everything she was and then cursed him with loving her so much now he could scarcely live without her.

 

**And now my bitter hands chafe beneath the clouds of what was everything.**

**Oh, the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything…**

 

He fools himself and his friends by taking out their pictures and stuffing them in a box deep in his closet. They all believe is a step forwards to getting over it, even himself. He has set his mind in moving on with his life and he is convinced the first step towards that is trying to erase her from his life. He goes out, sleeps with a few girls, starts to play basketball with the guys every tuesday, takes cooking lessons with Hot Pi and even starts attending an administration class.

 

It’s fine for the first days. It feels like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders now that he doesn’t have to see her face around his apartment. But after a few days is all the same. Her grey eyes haunt his dreams anyhow and he daydreams about her sometimes. Sometimes he just wants to throw things in frustration because he is trying and he is failing. She is imprinted everywhere and it feels like he could get rid of every possession he has and change to an entire different continent and she would still be present.

 

She is present in her own absence. She is present when something funny doesn’t make him smile anymore. She is present when someone mentions Braavos and he doesn’t think about a trip there anymore. She is present when he fucks a random girl after lots of drinking and she doesn’t have grey eyes or dark hair. She is present when he doesn’t understand something and no one calls him stupid. She is present when he laughs at something in the Tv and no one is next to him laughing along.

 

He used to think that doing the same things without her was awful, now he thinks doing new things without her is even worse.

 

Because he wants to go out with her, wants to have sexin the back of his car with her, wants to play basketball with her, wants to cook something decent with her, wants to learn new things with her.

 

**I take a walk outside, I'm surrounded by some kids at play**

**I can feel their laughter, so why do I sear?**

 

_“C’mon! don’t be so fucking boring!” She is pulling him by his hand, obviously having no effect as he is twice as heavy._

 

_“Hey! I am not boring I am fucking tired have some sensitivity woman!”_

 

_From their seat next to them the boys laugh. They’re in a pub and only a few couples are dancing to some stupid 80’s ballad but Arya is drunk so of course she wants to dance._

 

_“Oh c’mon Gendry! Twist the girl around some!” Tom shouts with mirth._

_“Yeah! Show us your moves!” Hot Pie joins. The fucker knows Gendry can’t dance for life. “Arya, tell him how much you want to dance!” Their friend encourages Arya. Fucker._

 

_“Gendry, don’t you make me say please!” She shouts. All around their friends laugh because Arya never need to say please to get him to do anything. He simply raises an eyebrow. “You’re making me look conceited and demanding!”_

 

_He laughs at that one as he stands, and her cute laugh mixes with the cheers of their friends and even if he feels ridiculous, Gendry knows he will never fail to make her laugh._

 

After a few weeks of keeping up with the facade of “getting over it” he stops.

 

He tries so hard to not let it affect him, but the fact that his friends and the world around them can go on so easily only makes him feel like a failure.

 

“No one is expecting it to be easy man, you don’t have to pretend it is,” Hot Pie tell him when he confesses he is tired of pretending. “we miss her too.”

 

But they can move on, they can laugh and not feel guilty about it. It almost like his soul has withered. He can’t laugh without feeling like something is missing.

 

Her laughter seemed to be the water that allowed his smiles to bloom.

 

**Oh, and twisted thoughts that spin round my head, I'm spinning, oh,**

**I'm spinning, how quick the sun can drop away**

 

_“What can I do?! Everything has been crazy after dad died and now she wants to move. I can’t- I’ve been trying to convince her to stay but I can’t.” She was walking around the kitchen, making all kinds of things to distract herself._

 

_“You can stay, you can stay with me. That way you won’t have to transfer to a different university, I bet that would seem like a good point for her.” He offers from where he is standing next to the fridge. She looks at him with adoration and he nearly smiles, but he can see there is a sadness in her eyes as well._

 

_“She told me she would stop paying my tuition if I came to live with you.”_

 

_“What?!”_

 

_“You know she doesn’t- she doesn’t see you the way I do. I can’t drop out, I promised dad I would go to college, finish my degree. I promised him I would stay with the family and help them, that I would take care of my mom.” He knows that, when she cried in his arms after Ned’s death she shared with him the promises she made to her father._

 

_“It’s ok.” He says as he takes her in his arms. “We can visit each other and call and all that stuff. And then in three years you will graduate and we will be ok.”_

 

_“I thought the same. We will make it through and then I will come live with you. “_

Somedays he pretends that is their last moment together. That those two hopeful fools that got to embrace and dream are the end of the story.

 

But then her mother threatened to cut her off if she ever saw him again. Her mother who went up to him to tell him she had powerful friends who could make sure he never got a job again anywhere if he touched her daughter ever again. Catelyn Stark, who drove Arya to the apartment so she could take all her things and promised him he would never see her again.

 

He knows by Jon that Arya was forced to change her cellphone number and that Jon can only call the house because Catelyn fears Jon will give him her number. He knows Arya tried twice to run away before her mother used Bran’s condition and Rickon’s youth to guilt her into staying. Jon tells him she is saving money to go to Braavos someday.

 

A part of him wants to believe one day the kids will grow and she will graduate and she will go back to him or he will go to her or they will meet in the east.

 

The other part reminds him that she made a promise to her father to stay with her family to take care of her mother, and Arya would never break a promise to the man she admired the most.

 

**And now my bitter hands cradle broken glass of what was everything**

**All the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything…**

 

_“I love you. And that is forever.” her words are muffled since her face is buried in his neck, but he can understand it all the same._

 

_“Ok.” He holds her tighter but she still puts some space between them to look at him._

 

_“You idiot, I’m making a promise here and all you do is grin like a fool.” Obviualy she was expecting his own promise in return._

 

_“Fine, I promise to love you forever too.” The words sounded too corny for him. “Now you look like an idiot.” He said when she smiled foolishly back at him._

 

What Jon never tells him is if Arya is doing the same thing that he tried. If Arya is seeing someone else, if she’s doing new things, if she’s trying to have fun. Gendry knows she is. He knows she is more stubborn and determined than him. If she decides to move on, there will be nothing that will stop her from doing that.

 

Now all they both have is memories. Memories he holds on to even if they hurt him because feeling pain because of her is better than feeling nothing without her.

 

**All the love gone bad turned my world to black**

**Tattooed all I see, all that I am, all I'll be...**

 

Time passes, but the color doesn’t come back to his world. He learns to live in his new dim-lighted, unattractive world. He doesn’t quite accept it as much as he gets used to it.

 

This new world of his,  he doesn’t really know how to feel about it. He can’t feel anything in it. His world was Arya and when he lost her he was left with a permanent state of unfeeling. The only occasions he does feel something is when he pulls the box out and goes through their pictures, their smiles and he doesn’t know why he keeps going back to that pain. It just seems like that pain makes him more of a person than the rest of his life.

 

He misses her, and that is the most human thing about him now. That he once had a love and that he is forever hoping it will return to him.

 

**I know someday you'll have a beautiful life,**

**I know you'll be a star in somebody else's sky,**

**But why, why, why can't it be, can't it be mine?**

 

_“I want to go to Braavos someday, would you come with me?” She was looking up at him from the bed, all long naked limbs and disheveled hair._

 

_“Sure.” He faked hesitation for a moment, although he doubted she bought it. They had been together long enough for her to see he always followed her in anything she wanted to do._

 

_“We can go live there. You and me. You can start our own bussiness. You will fix the cars and I will manage it, I’m good at that.” She says with a smile._

 

_“Sounds like a good plan.” he says. He imagines her all tanned because of the Braavosi sun, all pretty and happy and only his, with no more problems rather than how many children they plan on having._

 

_“Of course. If it comes from my head, it’s a good plan.”_

 

_“You and me together in Braavos.”_

 

_“You and me happy together in Braavos.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Please review!
> 
> Also, I choose to believe they will meet again in Braavos xD


End file.
